Hateful Congressman Steve King Attacks Emma Gonzalez, Pulse Survivor

Ultra-conservative Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King attacked teenaged Parkland School shooting survivor-turned-activist Emma Gonzalez on his Facebook page over the weekend, following her moving speech at the March for Our Lives protest in Washington D.C, according to CNN.

Gonzalez, who became one of the most outspoken voices of the gun control movement following the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February that left 17 dead and more than a dozen more injured, delivered a fiery, eloquent speech at March for Our Lives on Saturday, where she invoked the names of all the lives the killer ended.

But King, who has a habit of making outrageous right-wing statements like comparing transgender troops to "castrated slaves" and suggesting trans people only join the military so that they can get gender confirmation surgery, ignored the trauma Gonzalez endured and the content of her speech to post about her Cuban heritage.

"This is how you look when you claim Cuban heritage yet don't speak Spanish and ignore the fact that your ancestors fled the island when the dictatorship turned Cuba into a prison camp, after removing all weapons from its citizens; hence their right to self-defense," King wrote in a meme along with Gonzalez's picture.

In the comments section on King's Facebook page, Brandon Wolf, a survivor turned anti-gun activist of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando that claimed 49 lives, wrote, "When it was my community, where were you? When it was Sandy Hook? Columbine? Were you on the sideline mocking those communities too? Did you question someone identifying as a mother? Did you question whether people like me were crisis actors?"

"Emma stood for 6 mins and 20 seconds to honor the lives of 17 gone too soon. The least you could do is shut your privileged, ineffective trap for 6 seconds to hear someone else's perspective," Wolf added, according to CNN.

King (or the person who manages his Facebook page) responded to Wolf by name-calling people who are against gun violence, stopping just short of labeling him a "snowflake."

"Pointing out the irony of someone wearing the flag of a communist country while simultaneously calling for gun control isn't 'picking' on anyone. It's calling attention to the truth, but we understand that lefties find that offensive," someone with access to King's Facebook page wrote.

Beyond mocking Gonzalez and denigrating trans people, King has also bashed immigrants with a xenophobic tweet from a year ago in which he wrote, "We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies." The long-running Iowa politician also came out hard against marriage equality, urging Congress to denounce it when the Supreme Court found in favor of marriage for same-sex couples.

"What I reject is an activist court with no basis for this decision transforming the greatest civilization we've ever seen by a 5-to-4 decision," King said at the time.